The Creatures of the Sea

I had been, like all of us, to aquariums as a child, admiring the beautiful colors of the fish, their variety. I never noticed the rest––the grotesque, the strange, the monstrous beauty of the underwater world. When I began to photograph animals, I found myself again in aquariums––and suddenly I began to see. It was as if a door had opened and I had a sudden vision backwards, an illumination of the world before man entered it––the mystery and terror of the beginning, our beginning, before we climbed up out of the water to the land. The dark time of the past is held, still alive and gleaming, silent, full of secrets, imponderable, in the faces of these strange creatures who live in the waters of our seas.